The Left-facing Dawn
by Raven Blanchard
Summary: A man dies. A woman grieves. A ritual is done. A girl stumbles upon a journal. These things happen in this exact order and yet not at all, but the timing of things hardly matters. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. (Time Travel Fix-it, Kinda drabble-style)
1. Bellatrix

BLURB:  
**A man dies. A woman grieves. A ritual is done. A girl stumbles upon a journal. These things happen in this exact order and yet not at all, but the timing of things hardly matters. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.**

Pairing: Bellatrix/Severus

Tags: Time Travel, Drabble fic, Angst, Probably Won't Be in Chronological Order, Unrequited love, Diary/Journal Style Narration, Fix-It

* * *

**Bellatrix Black**

**1961**

The diary - or journal, it matters not - looks quite ordinary, like it could contain pages upon pages of half-coherent ramblings that the writer might have once hoped would amount to something, _anything_, only for them to amount to absolutely nothing at all. Such is the case usually for such parcels. Their inconspicuous appearance would more often than not perfectly reflect the utter banality that is most of the human psyche. There is a reason people underestimate unremarkable objects, after all, and that is because such objects are nearly always as underwhelming as their appearance would suggest. A journal like this one? It would very likely contain nigh nonsensical mnemonics for some random witch or wizard's OWLs review. Notes for Potions or Transfiguration. Perhaps even spellcrafting ideas that would never ever come to fruition, and are actually quite useless in retrospect.

Bellatrix Black, ten-year-old bibliophile extraordinaire and self-proclaimed _thiasótis_ of wizarding history, knows this to be fact. In her numerous jaunts through her family's library, she has found such inconsequential journals aplenty.

This journal, however, seems to be an exception. If only because she hadn't found it in the library, but rather found it floating along the hall by the door to her chambers, as if waiting upon her.

It may look about as mundane as a student's daybook, its sawdust-colored leather cover worn but not too old, its spine wrinkled and showing a not unusual amount of wear, but upon seeing the first page, Bella knows she would be in for quite the broom ride.


	2. Dawn

BLURB:  
**A man dies. A woman grieves. A ritual is done. A girl stumbles upon a journal. These things happen in this exact order and yet not at all, but the timing of things hardly matters. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.**

Pairing: Bellatrix/Severus

Tags: Time Travel, Drabble fic, Angst, Probably Won't Be In Chronological Order, Unrequited love, Diary/Journal Style Narration, Fix-It

ooOoo

**ENTRY#1**

The half-blood prince died a year ago today, and nobody mourns him but me.

The weather today is freezing. It is foggy, dreary and so very _cold_, the kind of cold that is cloying and thick, penetrating my thick woollen clothes with ridiculous ease. It seems quite apt for what today means. Perhaps I am connecting stars into a constellation that exists not, but I feel, in my heart of hearts, that this cold forsaken weather, on this very day, is for _him_. In commemoration of the life he had lived. This would be _something_ for him at last, I think, when he has had absolutely _nothing_ for so long. It is a thought that fills me with a glee that is as vindictive as it is empty, for there is nothing to truly celebrate. Not anymore. Not with him gone.

The brisk climate in this place is hardly ever warm or welcoming, not even to those who know it so well in its frigid wintry glory. The very thought of it makes my chest ache with a grief that is bone-deep, a pain that gnaws and chews and _tears_, because this weather - this blasted unforgiving weather - embodies _him_ so well that the connection nearly has me reeling.

He is gone though, and nobody else misses him but me, because nobody else knew him. Not even the phoenix, whom he trusted so much. Such was by his design. In all the years I have known him, he had always been quite averse to letting people close. A look of consternation admixed with such reluctance had ever filled his countenance, when someone - anyone - had dared to veer close enough. He always did picture himself ever the tortured hero, that utter idiot, or at least the villain finally getting the torture he was due. So undeserving of love and friendship was he that a mere smile being directed at him has him quaking in his boots in pure, unadulterated horror.

Unless it was from the lily flower.

But the lily flower died, too, had been plucked as it bloomed the loveliest, _long before_ the half-blood prince breathed his last. And with its death, so did any capacity of his to love or be loved die a miserable death.

The half-blood prince has been gone for years before he took his dying breath. He had been alive but not living, dying but not dead, stuck in an agonizing stretch of limbo, wherein his loss flagellated him in each spare moment, wherein it ate him but by bit, until all that was left was a shadow; cold, purposeless, devoid of a will to live.

Nobody knew this but me.

I suspect not even he knew it himself.

The half-blood prince was just a simple man with little to no pleasures in his life. He was a flawed and broken man, yes, but he was not prone to much introspection unless it was to castigate himself for his hand in the lily flower's death.

He had died a year ago, but he was a dead man walking long before then.

It was love, in the end, that killed him.

The first thing one should know about the half-blood prince is that he only truly loved once in his life. _Once_, and it was a love so vehement, so ardent and consuming, that it owned him completely, burned through his entire being, so that it was what defined him in life and in death.

This fact, this singular truth, is the entirety of who he was.

The half-blood prince was and did many things. But the only thing he did with everything that he was, was love the lily flower.

He loved it with all his heart and soul, and it was what killed him in the end.

And nobody, _nobody_ knows it but me.

ooOoo

**A/N: This is a (hopefully) new take on the "time travel" trope, wherein instead of a person, a _diary_ is what goes back in time. Tell me what you think! Also leave some tips/suggestions I'm totally open to them :)**

**Also, yes, I am quite aware that Bellatrix is nearly a decade older than Severus in canon. And because I'd like to keep things - or at least, character ages - as canon as possible, I'd stick to that age difference.**

**Don't forget to leave a review! **


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